and then, and now:
by Appuru
Summary: It's because, on the inside, we're the same: we've always wanted someone else's heart. SoRi, 1shot


**and then, and now**  
maliceminded_ at_ livejournal (fanfic archive)  
appuru _at_ fanfiction net

I was listening to Brian Crain's "Song for Sienna" on repeat and heard it like a thousand times while I was writing.  
You should listen. It is a seriously gorgeous song.  
Forgive me if this whole fic sounds seriously cracked--Ri/So being my absolute favorite characters in the game, it figures I've never tried writing them. Or the fact that I can't. :P Also with the horrible habit of taking a fairly simple concept and make it horrendously, agonizingly long (this author's note, for example.)  
Enjoy, anyhow.

* * *

_Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye. _

--Toni Morrison, from _The Bluest Eye_

* * *

[1------------------------------------------------------------------_ then:_

_A dream never had:_

Riku was running, as far and as fast as his legs could take him.

Sweat rolled down the small of his back, and a choked grunt forced itself through his teeth as he sprinted across the beach, head swinging wildly from side to side as he searched. There were tracks in the sand, Wakka's blitzball and Selphie's jump rope lying on the dock, the thalassa shells Kairi liked so much scattered in the hissing tide. There were echoes of voices and the wind, but there wasn't any one else on the island. But they'd been there, moments ago. Now, no one but Riku.

There was Sora's wooden sword, its splintered, tapered edge flung point down in the surf. Minutes ago, Riku and his best friend had been dueling for the thousandth time--and--sure that he was going to win--he blinked--and then there was the arc of the sword as it fell through the air, its wielder having vanished into thin air. There were footprints in the sand, from where Kairi had been standing, watching the fight. Gone.

Dumbfounded at first, sure he was hallucinating, Riku had swiped a gloved hand across his eyes, blinked several times, and looked again. Nothing. There was nothing but the sound of the ocean and the gulls and his own breathing, as if some invisible force had suddenly spirited away all the other inhabitants on the play-island. With a heavy feeling of growing dread, Riku turned, walking the length of the beach, and called out his friend's names. "Sora," he yelled, waiting. Then, louder, "Kairi? Sora! _Sora!_" With the lack of response, he ran.

Panting, Riku skidded to a halt on the beach, looping back at where he'd started: next to Sora's abandoned weapon. The roar of the ocean waves, his heartbeat, the last thing Sora had said, Kairi's giggling, all pounding in his ears--he grasped the handle of the sword and yanked it out roughly--and as if it were the trigger, the tide rushed forward and splashed across his feet and legs, suddenly waist-deep. As quickly as it came, the surf fell back, the ocean moaned: a tsunami, crystal green and a long, low ache in the distance, rapidly gathering height and momentum.

Riku felt his eyes widen as he staggered back, the sinking dread and panic sharpening in his gut. The gulls cried louder, the wind tore at his clothes and hair, and the ocean reared back and whispered with the soft, sibilant voice of the tide, _it was meant to be_. And then it crashed forward.

The rip tide of water slammed into his body like truck. He was lifted off his feet and flung backwards, rolling over and over. Riku fought against the pull of the current, and above him, the ceiling of water sparkled with sunlight on the tops of the waves. The shore and the entire island vanished, until there was nothing but the brilliant blue of water, water all around him. Its weight seemed to double, then triple, forcing his arms down and pinning them to his sides. Distantly, Riku realized he was still holding Sora's wooden sword. The driftwood weapon felt like it was made of concrete and his fingers ached, holding it, but he couldn't let it go, it was Sora's, he had to give it back when he found him, the boy would never forgive him if he didn't...

Unable to breathe, air exploded out of lungs in a gasp of bubbles. The water drained all his energy, and despite his best efforts, Riku felt the force of motion curl around his body, force his eyes to close. The ocean had him pinned, and when he couldn't fight it anymore, it sent him spiralling down.

And he let the sword go...

[2------------------------------------------------------------------_ now:_

"Selphie, get your own!"

"No!" Aforementioned cheerful brunette took a long, defiant gulp out of Sora's mango smoothie, curling her body protectively around it.

"Kairi," Sora pleaded, turning on his friend, "Make her go away. Please?"

The red-haired girl giggled, shaking her head. "Fight your own battles, Sora!"

The boy was practically wailing. "Riku?"

Riku, traitorous as he was, merely raised an eyebrow and said firmly, "No."

"What? You, too?!"

"If I say anything, she'll be after mine next," the silver-haired teen explained mildly, sipping his own smoothie. Selphie nodded emphatically and shot Riku an approving thumbs-up, making him roll his eyes and snort good-naturedly into his drink. He patted Sora sympathetically on the back as the boy fell back onto the sidewalk besides him in utter despair.

"But that was the last of my allowanceeeee," Sora whined. He made a half-hearted attempt at reclaiming the victimized drink, drawing his hand back hastily as Selphie hissed at him.

"It's a lost cause, man," Wakka suggested, as he and Tidus emerged from the smoothie shop, whose sidewalk the whole mess of teenagers were busily loitering upon.

"Just get a new one," Tidus advised, flopping on the curb besides Selphie. He held out his drink and they traded sips, each making faces at each other's choosen (or, rather, Sora's) flavors and returning to their own. Sora moaned despondently. "Hell, you can freeload off Riku."

"Hey, what?"

Sora turned towards him with what he'd dubbed the "bambi eyes" long ago, hands clasped in front of him. "Would you, sir, buy me a--"

"No," said Riku flatly. When Sora pressed his hands to his chest in fake agony, he half-smiled and held the smoothie, willing to at least share. "You still owe me for the movie ticket to _Night of the WereRabbit_ from last week, ice cream from Balto's, and..."

"I get it, I get it," Sora mumbled around the straw. "I can't help it. My wallet, however, along with my burning pockets, thank you gravely for your honorable service."

"That reminds me!" Selphie said brightly, idly poking holes in the now-empty smoothie cup with her (Sora's?) straw. Tidus shot her a nervous look at a particularly sharp jab and scooted a few inches away. "What are we gonna do today? It's only, like, eleven o' clock."

"We could blitz," Wakka volunteered hopefully.

"Yeah, like we don't do that, say, _all of the time_," Tidus shot back, grinning. Wakka chucked his crumpled straw wrapper at him.

"Oooh, ohh, we could go to the mall!" Selphie bounced brightly on the curb. "I saw this ad for this pair of jeans that would _totally_ make your ass look super-cute, Sora, we've _gotta_ go make you try them o--"

"But we went to the mall yesterday," the brunet with the potentially cute ass interuppted, cowering slightly.

"Yeah," Kairi agreed, more for Sora's sanity then any other reason, excepting the fact that none of them enjoyed shopping with Selphie much, usually because she found something or other that would be _super-cute_ and force all of them into the dressing rooms in turn for hours at a time. "Movies?"

"Two days ago," Tidus said. He sighed and flopped backwards, cushioning his head with his hands. "Man, there seriously is nothing we do anymore. And it's only saturday. We've still got all today and half of tomorrow to goof off."

Kairi scoffed good-naturedly. "Speak for yourself. _Some_ of us don't put off everything til the passing period before it's due."

They all sat in relative silence for a moment.

It struck Riku that it wasn't the first particular time that they'd all, for once, had absolutely _nothing better to do_ then sit around, talking about how they had nothing to do. And how everything there was to do they'd already done. It was like years ago, all over again, except that they didn't go paddle out to the play island quite so often anymore. The sandcastles and swordfights they used to have had simply been substituted by the mall, the movies, and schoolwork, which made it a little more difficult to plan better adventures. It was, simply put, completely and irritatingly_boring_. What he saw of his friends, what he saw of Sora, blended one day into the next, as if his life now was one week recorded on a video reel and played front to back over and over, only pausing to change the dates and names of whatever mindless activity they indulged in.

He needed more then that, more then the yawning boredom that had possessed him with the dream of a raft two and a half years ago. It made him almost tired to see his friends, an unsettling feeling that stoked his nerves and set him on a grinding edge.

"Speaking of homework," Riku lied, passing the remains of his smoothie back to Sora and getting to his feet, "I, uh... have some stuff to do."

Kairi gazed at him, curious. "Got a lot of homework?"

"Yeah," he replied. "Calculus. You know, the fun stuff." It wasn't completely a lie: he did have things to do, minus the fact that he'd finished most of it in class on friday, and that it wasn't even due til wednesday.

"Aww, Riku," Sora wheedled, "Join usssss. Procrastinators unite! Starting tomorrow."

He smiled, ruffled Sora's hair in the way he knew would irritate and distract him. "Sorry, So... I'll see you guys tomorrow."

Then he turned and started walking, breaking into an easy loping jog after a few paces. Desperate, after all, to get away from the faces he'd come to love.

[3------------------------------------------------------------------_ then:_

_A letter never sent:_

Dear Keyblade Master,

It's been awhile since you last saw me--at Traverse Town, if I'm right. I've been watching you, though, one of the only things that old hag (read as: Malificent) lets me do, if I'm not out doing her dirty work, kidnapping princesses and all. You're doing a great job, by the way, of trying to find Kairi and me. You know, while you're out running around with your _new friends_, saving worlds and all that crap.

I hear about you a lot, you know. Malificent thinks she's manipulating me. She throws your name at me every chance she gest, partly because she knows that's just about the only thing that could provoke a reaction out of me, mostly 'cos she's just a bitch. The Heartless never shut up, either._You_ wouldn't be able to hear them, but they're always whispering about how hungry they are. Hungry for people and worlds to eat, hungry for people like you.

Kairi's still out cold. Literally and figuratively. But I'll find a way to bring her back, because apparently you won't. Or maybe you can't. Damn, Sora. (_Here the writing sloped off into a jagged curve. It picks up again, ragged and lost-looking.) _What happened to us? You said you've been looking all over for her--and because I've got her, by proxy, _me_--but it's been days and days and _days_ since you last saw me, and if you're trying so hard, it sure as hell doesn't show. We promised we'd always go together to the new worlds, but so far, it's been you with that dog and duck, me with Shadows and Kairi, and maybe thousands of miles between us. But it should've been_you_. I never thought of anyone else when I planned to leave Destiny Island. (_A heavy spot of ink lies here, indented hard in the paper.)_

You know, the stupid raft never would've gotten us anywhere, except maybe a few miles out on the ocean, before we'd run out of water and food. But now you have the power to open and close worlds, Keyblade Master, and I have portals that slip me from one shadow to the next. You've always been slower then me, Sora. Let's see if we'll ever meet up on the same world again, if _you_ can find _me_, because the Heartless and I always know where _you_ are. Let's see if you even want to. (_Another hard spot of ink, smudged along with the adjacent words, where somebody has tried to wipe it away.)_

Yours,

Riku

P.S.-- Sora, there's a reason the Heartless follow my orders instead of trying to eat me, too. It's not because of Malificent, who just likes thinking she can control us. It's because, on the inside, we're the same: we've always wanted someone else's heart.

[4------------------------------------------------------------------_ now:_

"Hey, Sora?"

Sora swallowed the half a sandwich he'd had stuffed in his mouth before responding, "Hey, Kai! What's up?"

"Not much, I just wanted to talk to you. Scoot your fat butt over."

"My butt is not fat," Sora protested, nevertheless grudgingly allowing his red-haired friend some bench space. As Kairi sat, he stuffed the other half of the sandwich--peanut butter and jelly, about the other thing that was safe to consume from the high school's cafeteria--in his mouth, chewing purposefully. "What'd you wanna talk about?"

Kairi wrinkled her nose at him, wondered whether she should be amused or disgusted, and settled on saying, "That's really gross, Sora." The brunet chewed a little more and stuck at his tongue at her, displaying the mashed remains of the sandwich. She shoved at him playfully. "_Urgh,_ put that thing back in! Where's Riku?"

The brunet made a waving motion over his shoulder, in the general direction of the wall of vending machines, where a long line of students desperate for something edible jangled spare change and chattered. "Somewhere in the abyss," he mumbled around the sandwich and huge gulp of milk he'd taken. Ignoring how silly the brunet looked with ballooned-out cheeks, Kairi could just pick out a head of silver hair, standing inches above the surrounding students--largely a throng of girls who whispered shyly or slyly around him. "I think he went to get juice or something--Tidus gave him his school lunch and something started moving in the noodles and it was really kinda sick so he went to get something to settle his stomach." The blue-eyed boy pictured Riku dueling with the alien lunch with a plastic spork and snorfled to himself. "Uhh, why?"

"I dunno, just..." she hesitated for a second. "Has he seemed, um... different, to you lately?"

Sora's eyebrows knit as he crumpled up the plastic wrap his sandwich had come with into a ball, tossing it idly from hand to hand. "Now that you mention it, kinda, yeah," he admitted. They watched their friend in silence for a minute. "Y'know, he hasn't been coming out with us lately. He always says he's got work or something." Sora frowned, quickly recounting in his head how many hours Riku had spent in their presence. The number wasn't very high.

Kairi regarded him with curious eyes. "Have you asked him about it?"

"Nah. I dunno, he's... quiet. He hasn't been picking up his phone either." The more he thought about it, the more disturbing it was. A tinge of guilt crawled into his thoughts: what if he'd been somehow neglecting his best friend? He'd been so overjoyed to be home, and back with his family, and they'd all been so busy in the first three months of catching up all the lost time at school and home that they hadn't had time to see each other much. Riku was still a year above him, so they didn't have a lot of classes together, either. In fact, the more he thought about it, he hadn't been seeing Riku much at all, except at break and lunch time, and rarely on the weekends, when they managed to coax the silver-haired boy out of his house. He stilled teased Sora mercilessly, but--he realized with a pang--for awhile now, there'd been a feeling under his skin that _something_was changing. "Ohmygod," Sora breathed, "I've made him _the other woman_._It's all my fault_."

"Okay, _now_ you're overreacting just a little bit." Kairi rolled her eyes, grinning. They both watched Riku fending off gifts of juice and various junk food from his many admirers. (One particularly exuberant girl nearly beaned him in the head with a can of paopu pop.) "Somehow, I don't think he'll _ever_ be alone. But in any case..." The smile grew uncertain on her face, and her violet eyes looked concerned.

"I'll talk to him," Sora promised, picking up on her anxiety.

"Talk to who?" The teen in question asked, making Sora start and nearly spill his water bottle, and Kairi giggle at the brunet's reaction. He plopped on the bench with his hard-won bottle of--after all that struggle,_ warm_--orange juice. At Sora's nervous silence and Kairi's amused smile, he raised a silver eyebrow. "Is there something on my face, or what?"

"Nah, it's just the face in general," the red-head offered, appropriating her most horrified expression. Sora broke out into laughter, and just like that, the tension dissipated. They sat there, idly bantering for the remainder of the lunch period, before the bells rang and Kairi headed off to the gym to change. The boys took their time, since Sora had study hall for his period (along with the fact that the last time the sign-in had been checked was sometime in 1986) and Riku, having only four classes, was allowed to leave school early.

"So, Riiiiiii-koooooo--"

Riku arched an eyebrow at his friend, banging his locker shut as he stowed away his calculus textbook. "You only make that face when you want something, So'. Should I be afraid?"

"I didn't even ask yet!" Sora pouted, poking the silver-haired teen hard in the ribs.

"Okay, okay. Continue, princess."

The brunet made a face at him. "Says the guy with shampoo commercial hair--"

"It's naturally like that!"

"--ANWAY," Sora cheerfully plowed on, face lighting up in anticpation, "As I was saying before I was so _rudely interrupted_, d'ya wanna--"

"Sora!"

Sora made a exasperated noise, pretending to strangle himself, before he turned to the voice calling his name. Riku eyed the girl who skidded to a halt in front of them, panting. "Sora, y'gotta do something," she begged, "You know that guy, Jim? Hawkins or something? Our group project's due _tomorrow_ and he hasn't done a _thing _for his share and then Mrs. Pasetti will give us all fails and--"

"Relax, relax," Sora laughed, patting her shoulder soothingly. "I'll call him or something and make sure..."

Riku watched the exchange with a sense of detachment, rapidly losing interest as the girl went through what looked like the throes of a nervous breakdown over their project, Sora trying his best to calm her down. Sighing softly to himself, he muttered a quiet "Catch you outside, So," and walked away, missing the pair's inquisitive and, in Sora's case, concerned glances at his back.

The aqua-eyed teen stood waiting under one of the trees near the campus gates, staring at the sky and thinking hard. It seemed like a thousand years ago, that he'd been able to slip so easily into conversation the way Sora could; a whole lifetime ago, he had been the one who'd introduced Sora to Tidus and Wakka and prodded the at-first shy brunet to speak up. He knew it was all in his imagination, but it a drew a distinct line in his life, a Riku before-and-after, and the length of that line was the distance between himself and the other islanders. And he knew, eventually, it would the line between him and his best friends.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Sora and The Girl emerging from the main hall doorway. Sora, chattering animatedly, laughed and locked his interlaced hands behind his head the way he always did, his body forming a lazy Y shape. The Girl laughed too, breathed a sigh of relief, and hugged Sora, before bidding him goodbye and dashing off again.

He saw the Sora smiling his 'oops, that was kind of embarrassing' grin and supressed a small scowl, his mood sharply plummeting again. Why should it matter if someone hugged Sora? It wasn't his business, wasn't his business, wasn't his business.

But it didn't lessen the fact that, in the back of his mind, it very much _was_. To Riku, anyway, and that was where all the problems started.

"Hey, Riku, why'd you go?"

Riku blinked, snapping out of his thoughts. "Dunno," he replied off-handedly, pivoting lazily on one heel and beginning to walk towards the school gates, just so he wouldn't have to face Sora after that particular reverie. It was, he found, getting harder and harder to deal with. He did risk a glance over his shoulder when he didn't hear Sora following, looking again quickly at the sight of Sora's inquisitive gaze. "You coming?"

"Oh, yeah." Sora caught up with him a few paces, and together they started heading towards their usual spot, the a tree that fell under the eastern side of the main school building, where they went to be lazy and unproductive during their free time. "Anyway, like I was saying before, my mom's been after me for awhile to get you to come over--it's been _ages_ since she's seen you, y'know, and she won't shut up about it?" Sora grinned breezily. "So I figure, might as well kill two birds with one stone, right, you can come over and help me with my stupid math homework, have dinner, and then I can whoop your butt at_ Smash Fighters Ultimate IV._"

Riku chuckled. "No wonder you suck at math, that's three things, not two birds. And, I recall, the _SFU IV_ score still stands at thirty-eight to nothing."

Sora processed this, made another face at Riku, and then eagerly returned to his business of badgering his best friend. "What-_ever_, Ri. So, yes?"

He thought he saw something flit through those sea-green eyes; a dizzying moment where he knew Riku was a million miles away from their conversation, lost somewhere in his own thoughts. But as soon as he'd blinked, the look was gone, and Riku was half-frowning apologetically.

"I'd love to, but I can't, Sora."

"_Whaaaat?_ Whyyyyy?" Sora whined, tugging on Riku's uniform sleeve. "C'mon, Riku, we haven't hung out in forever..."

A sigh escaped the silver-haired teen, before he turned to look at Sora. "I just... have a lot to do. Studying, and mom wants me to start helping her clean out the attic--"

"Riku, you're getting straight 'A's," Sora interrupted, humor lost from his voice. He stopped walking abruptly, and subconsciously, Riku followed suit. "And you said that _last_ week. Riku--" He pulled harder on his friend's shirt, forcing the other boy to face him. "It feels like I haven't seen you in a long time," he said quietly, looking troubled. "I... miss being with you, Ri. Riku...--Riku, what's _wrong_?"

"Wha... What're you talking about, Sora?"

"It's like..." Sora's brow furrowed as he searched for words, still not relinquishing his hold. "...like you're avoiding me and Kairi, lately. We both noticed, y'know. You're always busy doing 'other stuff.'" He caught his gaze, held it. "It's like you're afraid of something, Ri."

"Get real, Sora," Riku half-scoffed, doing (in Sora's opinion) a subpar job of trying to laugh it off. "Afraid of what? Trying to get how to do logs through your thick skull?"

He knew Sora wasn't going to let it go when the joke didn't tease any laughter out of his good-natured friend. "Riku," Sora said again, stepping forward and drawing close--blue eyes steadily holding his--"You_know_ you can tell me anything...right?"

He stared back at the brunet, paralyzed by the words and his guilt. _Wasn't your business, now was it, Riku?_ "I know, So'," he said, breaking his gaze. His tongue felt thick and useless in his mouth with the weight of Sora's crestfallen expression. He backed away and started walking again, eyes fixed firmly forward; afraid of what'd he see, or what'd he feel, if he looked back. "It's nothing, don't worry."

"Promise?" Sora demanded.

The word was like a hot coin on his tongue, penny-bright and burning fast. "Promise," Riku lied, smiling softly on the outside, hoping he could calm his friend. It almost worked. Sora let the subject drop, but in their secret hearts, both knew they wouldn't forget the conversation, Riku's mirror-eyed movements--giving and taking nothing away--Sora's alarm and subconscious disappointment. But the moment was gone.

Riku settled himself among the roots of their favorite tree, looking up at his best friend; something seized inside Sora, at how his eyes were _almost_ the same as how they'd used to look, and how his words seemed so powerless to break through. The silver-haired boy cocked an eyebrow at him. "Hey, c'mon, I'll help you with your logs now."

"Ugh, okay..."

Oh, Sora, Sora. If only you knew.

[5------------------------------------------------------------------_ then:_

_a nightmare:_

The night the Heartless stormed Destiny Isles was the darkest day of the year. The ground teemed with shadows come alive and the wind shrieked as if their claws could pierce its invisble skin, as if the golden-eyed, hungry gasp of monsters in the dark could lay hold of every element of the world and consume it piece by piece.

He couldn't fight them, not with a measly wooden sword that seemed to simply shift through their fluid forms. Sora yelled, running as fast as he could from the dock. All the vessels had been destroyed, great bone-white jaws of aquatic Heartless having mangled them to useless pieces. Their raft was included in the casualties.

There was no one left on the island, none of his friends, his parents, or his neighbors. Shadows boiled over the ground faster then he could think. Faster then that, instinct told him to find his best friend, just because Riku always knew what to do. So he made a break for the little paopu tree island, the place he had come to know as Riku's.

Fortunately, he found Riku there.

Unfortunately, the Heartless found him first.

"Riku!" Sora shouted, eyes widening. The silhouette of his best friend was cut in sharp relief against the impossible black of the sky, the sea, and the earth. He turned to Sora slowly, a trance, that tidal-wave dream all over again: and slowly, Riku raised an arm and held out his hand. He could just make out the other boy's lips forming words: _we'll go together_.

"Riku!" Sora screamed, sprinting up onto the island. The tendrils of shadow beneath their feet caught him and tripped him up, as if the vortex beneath them was a marsh thousands of feet deep, sinking Riku faster and faster. He threw out an arm, fingers just brushing the other boy's, disconnecting. Struggling, he swiped for the other's arm again and missed. "Riku! _No! _RIKU!"

There was no sound, there was no time.

_We'll go together_, Riku mouthed. He was glassy-eyed, distant, but still reaching out. Sora attempted to grab his hand again, desperation coloring his movement, but the Darkness swallowed his intentions and slowed him down, feeding on his emotions. He hissed, in pain or fear he did not know, as the creeping shadows curled up around both of their bodies. It sent a sharp, burning sensation through his clothes, but Riku didn't even looked fazed. Still holding that hand out. Still silently saying,_ we'll go together._

He couldn't even lift his arms anymore. And the strangling Dark choked his voicebox and silenced him, dragging him further and further away from his friend._ He belongs to Us_, the Shadows hissed, growing out of the sand around them, circling their silver-haired victim. _He is one of Us. You cannot take him back_.

_RIKU!_

He could not speak, he could not scream, but the terrible, cloying fear in the pit of his stomach seemed to relent for a fraction of a second, as the Shadows touched that destroying emotion in his brain and recoiled, hissing. The sound could not escape, but maybe, Sora realized hopefully, the thought did: Riku looked briefly startled, and for that fraction of a second, lost, and so, so afraid. _That's right_, Sora thought, because when they were little Riku would have rather died then admit it but he had always been afraid of the dark. But that tiny glass second of time froze and was destroyed by Heartless, who, nursing their wound for only as long as it took for their instincts to kick back in, were all over the two boys.

_She to him_, they hissed in Riku's ears. _And you with Us. You knew it! You have always known it!_

He didn't know what kind of effect that was supposed to have on his best friend, but the grip they had on his throat closed tightly again; the lost-little-boy look in Riku's eyes melted into grief and anguish and then: it hardened, an anger that could not be measured or bound. The shadows hissed and surged away, as if they too had been scalded by his heart, but unlike Sora's captors, they could not reach him again. But they didn't need to. The face he'd always remembered caught in smirks and silly smiles and ridiculous grins tightened and dropped in something he could no longer identify.

Riku, he cried desperately in his head, Riku, no! Riku--!

There was a sound like a shot in his head, and a sudden, pulsating coldness. And the world dropped out from under his feet, transformed, the cold creeping claws of the Heartless having finally chewed through the door, through the core, found its seams and stripped its skin away. And they were lost. Sora couldn't breathe, but he still fought, trying to free his arms and find his voice.

_Riku!_

_We would've g--_

And then the brunet blacked out, in a lightning strike of frigid, electrifying cold.

The worse part of it all, Sora would later find out, when he lifted his pounding head from the cobblestoned streets of Traverse Town, was that this--the most vivid of his recently strange dreams--hadn't been a nightmare at all.

[6------------------------------------------------------------------_ now:_

One week after he'd successfully eluded another attempt at socializing, Riku did what was quite possibly the most exceedingly stupid thing an islander could do:

He swam out into the open ocean at night.

If you asked him later why he'd done it, he would honestly tell you he still wasn't really sure why. Carefully cautious Riku, struck by a sudden fit of impulsiveness. It sound impossible.

It started when he was walking home from the Quiki-Mart, where the silver-haired boy had gone to--of all things--pick up some milk at his mom's request (or, more accurately, mom's demand, while she swatted him in the rear with a spatula.) He'd taken a detour on the way back, walking along the beach and watching the waves, when it suddenly struck him that this type of thing--_picking up milk from the grocery store_--was the sort of thing ten-year-olds did in kid's novels and old-fashioned TV shows. The sheer normality of it all made him snort inside, but his laughter died away quickly.

One of his worst fears, when he'd been sitting on that dark beach with Sora, was that--after all their struggle, after the weeks of wearing Ansem's skin and watching Sora from painful sidelines--when they made it home, it still wouldn't be enough.

And, after all that, he was right.

Their lives had settled into the routine that typical teenagers occupied, and it was the boring routine that'd made The Riku of Old want to puke, so, so desperate to shove off this tiny rock in the sea. He knew that tomorrow, he'd wake up and go to school, sleep in class, ace all his tests anyway, eat what looked vaguely like a lunch with Sora and Kairi, and then he'd go home and help around the house, eat some more, and then he'd do his homework, and then he'd sit and think awhile, and then he'd sleep, deeply unsatisfied.

The fact that he knew this would happen tomorrow--and the day after that--and the day after_ that_--shook him to the core. _It was happening again_. Riku stared at the water, paralyzed, thinking of the great groaning noise of a tidal wave sucking up water, gathering force. He didn't want to go, not without them, and at the same time he definitely could not stay.

Riku barely felt the water when he first struck out--island nights were humid, and the tropical oceans surrounding Destiny Isles carried only the faintest chill at night. His strong arms and legs ate the long smooth distance rapidly; one hundred yards, two hundred, five. When his arms got tired, he switched to the mermaid kick Sora had picked up in Atlantis and taught him in the summer; when his legs felt like lead, he flipped over and backstroked.

_I'm an idiot,_ he realized, having only distantly noted that the main island was long out of sight, and the star-speckled heavens above mirrored the water all around him.

He did not want to and he definitely could not stay._ Could not stay_._ Not here, not now, and not like this._ He could tread the water forever, live on nothing but the deep, rippling calls of the whales beneath, the circular tracks of the sun and moon above. He thought of how he and Sora had made their mad dash for shore, after they'd come through the Door to light. How he could be a million miles out to sea, and he would never...

If there was anything he was proud of, anything he'd learned while walking blind-folded on the path he'd chosen, it was that in the Darkness, there was no support. For all creatures of the shadows, there is only one principle: _sink or swim_. You dragged your empty shell as far as you could, in a desperate gamble of time versus energy, searching for sustenance. Or you fell through and you slept, blissfully painless, gradually eroding away.

Riku had tried haggling through _those_ dark waters, until he saw Sora's blues eyes on the other side of that heavy white Door. And then he stopped and stood in between, fighting to keep the pieces of the real Riku together, struggling to space those pieces just far enough apart so that the waiting dark could slip on through and give him the strength to keep moving forward. One foot in either camp. Treading water, for such a long, long, time.

Twilight, Riku had found out, was ambiguous; it didn't lead to doorways out. At dusk and dawn, _all_ shadows and lights were gray.

He didn't know how long he was at sea, floating on his back and staring at the sky. The ocean had been unusually calm when he started out, flat as a pancake, and--Riku frowned. There were ripples now. What the hell? _The salinity's destroying my brain already_, he thought dryly. And then he saw the boat, just at the edge of his vision, over the tips of his bare feet and waterlogged jeans.

Maybe if he hadn't had so much water in his ears, maybe if he had the energy to lift his head farther up and look, maybe if he wasn't so goddamn stupid as to swim out in the ocean for no particular reason, he would've heard a thin, panicked voice yelling, "_...Riku! Rikuuuuuu! ...RIII--"_

Then, louder: "RIKU!" That got his attention. He blinked seawater out of his eyes, groggily, even though his mind had been clear as day less then two minutes ago. The boat approached. Shifting his center of gravity slightly, he lifted his head up more, and a tuft of brown spikes poked over the prow, into his line of sight. Then he was nearly crushed under the keel of Sora's hasty rescue rowboat.

"RIKU!" Sora screeched, dropping the paddle in the water. The silver-haired teen pushed himself away from the wooden vessel, coughing violently as it cruised to a halt and threw one last parting wave of water over his head.

"W-what the hell, Sora?" Riku gasped out. Sora grabbed his arm and hauled him upwards, nearly capsizing the little boat in the process.

"No, _you_ what the hell, Riku!" Sora replied angrily, brandishing--of all things--his shoes, which he'd left on the beach, along with his jacket. "Seriously, WHAT THE HELL, YOU BIG, DUMB, MORON."

Riku stared at him incredulously, wiping his soaking hair out of his face. "How'd you find me? ...How'd you even _know?"_

"Your mom called my house when you went missing for over an hour," Sora explained. "'Cos she figured that's where you'd be.You know, when you didn't come back. With the milk." From behind his seat, he hefted the plastic Quiki-Mart bag, which had been lying next to his rather sandy, forlorn-looking jacket.

"...Ah."

"Yeah, I know." Sora's eyes narrowed, an uncharacteristic scowl scrunching his forehead and nose. "You scared the crap out of us, Riku. Why the hell would you swim all the way out here? At _night?_"

He cast about his mind for a reasonable, logical explanation.

There were none forthcoming. "I..." Sora's scowl deepened dangerously. "I..."_did not want to go, I could not bear to stay._

It takes two, you see, to make a lie: one who gives nothing, and the other who takes whatever he can receive. Subtract one side of the equation, and the other goes too. When Riku saw the look on Sora's face, the truth erupted dangerously from his frame: "I can't stay here, Sora. I _have_ to go."

Sora shoulder's, tight with anger, slackened a little; his expression changed from furious concern to furious confusion. "Wha... Wait. What do you mean? Why?" His eyes widened in realization, hurt dawning slowly on his face. "You would've left us...without telling us?" The brunet's brow furrowed as he thought rapidly. _But you can't leave this place without a gummi ship, or making a..._

"No!" Riku blurted out. His voice sounded choked and hoarse, from the bitterness of the saltwater he'd swallowed, along with the bitterness of a dormant feeling rotting in his gut. "No, Sora. It's not like that. I..."

_I could not bear to stay_.

Sora reached out and grabbed his hand, tugged it gently so he'd be forced to look at him, the way he always did when he thought Riku had words caught in his throat, or when he was lying badly. The familiarity that came with the simple, comforting gesture clenched tightly in his chest. "Then_ why_, Riku?" He asked, voice plaintive. He could see the wheels working in Sora's mind, inventing a thousand reasons Riku would have to abandon him and his world, none of them right.

"I..." He'd been a smooth talker once, had a glib tongue that had gotten him out of many scrapes before, but where did that all go now? _Why is it so hard to be goddamn _honest?

"I'm sick of this," Riku finally forced out. They were both surprised by the quiet ferocity of the statement, how hateful it sounded, hanging in the air between them. The grip on his hand tightened; his hard-beating heart seemed to echo louder in spite of it. "The island, the people, the things we do and say... every day's just a repeat of the one before it. Just like before we left the first time." Sea green eyes squeezed shut, voice shaking. "I can't take it, Sora. And... I can't take just_ being _here, next to you. Not when we'd grown up together on this island."

"Riku--"

"Do you remember what I said to you when we were at that dark beach?"

"Yeah," Sora answered, cautiously. "The stuff about how you were jealous about me? And I said--"

"And you said you'd always thought I was better then you at everything." Riku echoed. He closed his eyes, and Sora nodded.

"I _lived_ off that, when were kids. I couldn't stand not being number one, because then I thought I wouldn't be number one in your eyes. You..."_ Were the center of my world_. He hesitated again, swallowing hard. Where had all his easy confidence went, when he was fifteen and couldn't get enough of being alive?

"I was jealous when you started crushing on Kairi. I saw The Door and thought, if I could open it, she'd go back to where she belonged, and _we_ could go to see the other worlds, like I promised we would."_Only I haven't been very good at keeping my promises_, he thought dryly. "I was so pissed and angry when you didn't take my hand--" _that darkest day of the year--_ "--I almost_ killed_ you. And even after all that crap, when I was looking for you later, it was thinking of _you_ that kept me up in the Darkness. Don't you _see_?" Sea-green eyes stared hard at the floorboards of the boat. "I needed you so goddamn much, Sora," Riku forced out. "If someone told me they'd take you away again, and that I'd have to live here on this rock, in the same boring monotony, watching you be with someone else, I'd open that goddamned Door all over_ again_. What the hell kind of friend would I be, if I held you down with that again?"

In Sora's silence, Riku finally looked up. His eyes swung and locked on Sora's, fierce and pleading, proud and ashamed at once. "I went to the Darkness, because I didn't have you."

[7------------------------------------------------------------------_ then:_

_Six syllables never spoken:_

"I have always loved you."

[8------------------------------------------------------------------_ now:_

There was silence in that little boat and sphere of sky for a long, long moment. Riku tore his gaze away from his best friend, almost regretting the words the second he'd spit them out. Oh, _fuck fuck fuck. Good job, idiot_.

Then, slowly, he said, "Riku?"

"...Yeah?"

The silver-haired boy looked up. And he never saw what happened next coming.

"HOLY FU--_OW_, SORA!"

Sora rubbed his knuckles where he'd lunged forward onto his feet and punched Riku in the face, almost hard enough to knock the other male out, and certainly hard enough that the boat nearly capsized again. "You're so freaking _stupid,_ Riku!" The brunet shouted, eyes blazing. A bewildered Riku gaped, gingerly touching his cheek, where Sora's fist had connected with his head. There were even more stars dancing around his head now and his whole world shook, but clearer than anything were Sora's blue, blue eyes, currently narrowed in the angriest face he'd ever seen on his best friend.

"What about _our_ feelings, huh?!" Sora yelled, nearly choking himself on exasperation and excitement. "What about _mine_? Goddamnit, Riku, how could you even--" he broke off for a minute, expressions shifting rapidly from rage to hurt to sorrow, and then back to a simmering fury.

"You've been through so much," he finally said, much more softly, and his eyes looked sad now, and just a tiny, tiny bit annoyed. "You keep beating yourself up for a _mistake_ you made over two _years_ ago, Riku. And then you went through it all again, for _me_, and you STILL can't forgive yourself?! And..." He waved his fist threateningly when it looked like Riku was going to interrupt. He also looked close to furious tears. "And you're so _stupid_, stupid, STUPID!"

"Thanks, Sora," Riku said wryly, "I didn't quite get that the first time."

"You don't understand," Sora went on impatiently, an undercurrent of anger still highlighting his voice, though it had mostly drained off, sloughed off his shoulders like water on the wings of a seabird. "Why would I search _worlds_ for you, Riku, if I didn't care enough about you to try and fight to get you back out of the Darkness? Why--" He broke off, voice clouding over. His fists unclenched, hands coming down to rest on the other boy's shoulders; when Riku looked up, dazed, Sora's expression looked so, so soft, something he could bury his whole body in and then sleep peacefully forever. "If I didn't care about you, if I liked Kairi as much as you _thought_ I did, I could've just, you know, hopped across that three meter ditch when the worlds were splitting and spent the rest of my life_here_. Without you." He made a face, plunking down on the seat across from him, hands sliding from Riku's shoulders to curl loosely around his biceps. "Do you _get_ it yet?" He asked earnestly, staring up at his friend.

"I..." Riku shrugged helplessly. _Could not stay_. "_You_ don't get it, yet. I was... _am _...obsessed... with you." He looked violently upset, pale and almost sick, staring back at him. He couldn't remember ever being so candid, not in his whole life, not when he'd spent most of it smirking and lying and waiting, waiting, waiting--but those golden moments he'd spent with Sora, laughing and being general tards together, had made it all worth it, then. "You deserve better then having someone like me desperately cling to you for the rest of your life, Sora, and...--jesus, please don't hit me like that again."

Sora rolled his eyes, making an effort to clear the incensed look from his face. He shook Riku's shoulders gently, and he could feel the other male's exhaustion, wondered how long he'd carried that terrible questioning weight inside him, holding up still in spite of the lack of the buoyant force of his own self-worth.

"You're still a big, dumb, moron," the brunet clarified affectionately. "I know you got to call the shots when we were kids, Ri, but it's _me_ who gets to decide who I deserve. And--"

"Sora, no--"

It seemed as if the last of his anger slipped away, and his natural cheer was coming back. "Shut up, Riku," he said off-handedly, smiling. And then he leaned forward and kissed him.

"Sora," he said weakly, "But... this place..." They both gazed around them, at the ceiling of water and stars. "We..." They both knew instinctively that the pathways between worlds were closed and locked and bolted; Riku couldn't have lifted himself from their share of the universe, no matter how badly he could hoped to, yet another thing that had deadened his spirit for weeks. "I'd drift." _The way I always have. _The words floated in the quiet space between them.

Sora didn't even bat an eyelash at that one. "Then I'll anchor you," he said, as if the answer had always been that clear to him. Maybe, Riku thought, it was, or had always been. "You... just don't go." The solution. Simple and clean.

Despair surged through him for a moment--_you can't even protect him from yourself,_ the tiny, malicious voices in the back of his mind seethed--but he was exhausted, tired of keeping the way he felt inside for so many years; tired, at long last, of wandering the way his mind drove him to. He looked at Sora, his honest and caring eyes, and he sighed against his lips. _I didn't want to stay_.

Sora waited, holding his breath, the tiniest slice of insecurity quivering in his eyes, for the first time during their whole exchange.

_...but I couldn't leave, either_. And Riku kissed him.

They balanced there, on that precarious edge of the world: then Sora knocked their foreheads gently together and smiled, in that warm, intensely _Sora_ way, the one he'd always associated with the power to make his heart beat painfully in his chest. "Let's go home," Sora said softly. "Okay? No more leaving each other behind. Not ever."

"...Yeah," Riku agreed. "...Except you threw the paddle overboard, and I think it sank awhile ago."

"_What_?" Sora blinked stupidly, and Riku snorted out loud, until he was laughing so hard his ribs felt like they'd explode, really feeling it for the first time in a long, long while. Sora shoved him in the arm playfully, though he still had the grace to flush pink in embarrassment. "Um. Well. Err... That was smooth."

"Very," Riku agreed again. "Thanks, oh clumsy knight in shining armor."

"Yeah, yeah, shut it, dumb moron princess," Sora grinned. Straightening, he yawned, stretching his arms over his head; neither of them had realized how late it was getting, or how drained they were. "Oh, well, we can just swim the boat back to shore tomorrow morning... Or chuck up a flare or firaga, in case we get stuck in miles of open sea, courtesy of some big doofus." He plopped down in the bottom of the boat, carefully ducking his head under the wooden slat-seat set at the bow of the vessel, stretching out at the bottom. He patted the wooden boards besides him cheerfully. "C'mon, there's room for both of us."

Riku eyed the small space, opened his mouth to comment, and thought better of it; shut it, and ducked under too, moving carefully so he wouldn't tip the craft over. Sora scooted over to make more room for him, but after only a second's hesitation, he drew an arm around the other boy and pulled him closer. Sora drew a deep breath into his still-damp clothes--apparently tired from so much yelling and face-punching--stopping only to grab Riku's jacket and squish it into a vaguely pillow-like shape. He murmured a quiet good night, and fell fast asleep in no time at all.

Riku, however, spent half that long night staring over the top of Sora's head at the sides of the boat. It was cramped at the bow and honestly too small for two people to comfortably lie at its bottom, but it held the two of them as close as a cradle, as the beds and blanket-tents they used to share, and the waves were calm and only gently rocking. He buried his nose in soft chestnut spikes, thinking, thinking...

_What the hell_, he decided, closing his eyes, listening to Sora breath. Sora shifted besides him, sighing in his sleep. _I'll take my chances_.

In the silence of dawn, as the ocean slowly pushed the boat towards the shoreline, Riku finally fell asleep, feeling like something from years ago had clicked in his chest, as if it had peeled a husk of what-ifs and might-have-beens away and made everything alright.

[9------------------------------------------------------------------_ then and now:_

_You'd look at his eyes--how bright they are. The exact color of the tide, rolling in on Destiny Isles' clean, bone-white beaches. You saw how, if you squinted hard enough, you could see the cogs turning in Sora's mind, and you'd already know if he'd suggest playing volleyball instead of doing his chores. And you wished you had the courage to put your arms around him and pull him ever closer to you, as if you could bind him to your soul indefinitely. If not even that, you wished you were brave enough to tilt your head towards his, of a spring evening when you both should've been studying for chapter tests in school... as if you could have touch your forehead to his and let him know, by conduction, how much he means to you. But you didn't. You'd known, on the darkest day of the year, how much you needed him. And you still hadn't told him._

_But Sora is the kingdom's key: he could open up places, and things, and people. Always, especially, you. _

_The hesitation wasn't because you were afraid of what _he_ would do. Sora's way too much of a doofus to be intentionally cruel to anything you could've possibly say to him. It wasn't because you were unsure of your feelings--only what they would _do_ to him. You've known, from the moment you met over the fence between your yards, that you two would grow to be friends, best friends; partners, enemies, rivals: that in him you found a completeness that Ansem's Heartless craved so badly they could've destroyed worlds, for want of it. But at least, you convince yourself, it's mostly over now, that you no longer have anything to fear._

_In Sora, all that was dark and deep inside you became more then an unbearably ugly truth: it became liveable. You could breathe._


End file.
